Michael P.
Modern day robbery. AVOID!
Invision Community is modern-day robbery. Avoid at all costs! After running forums for the past 15 years+, I decided to go with Invision for our latest project a few years ago. The reason being is that Invision WAS an established name in forum software. In total, I ended up spending $400 USD and I didn't really mind until the day they decided to drop support for the product. The only thing left was "community support". What kind of a joke is that? You pay a premium for a sub-par product then you're on your own for any issues. What is the point of the renewal fee then? If you don't pay your renewal fee and an update comes out, be prepared to close a pop-up window on YOUR website every 24 hours alerting you that an update has just come out. Nearly all the plugins and themes you require cost decent money too as well as have a renewal fee. This means the monthly costs really start to add up. The problem is you can use other forum software that does the same thing (or better) for free, and the plugins are free or have a one-off payment. You can really tell how much this company wants your money when you try to log into your client portal. There is simply no login for existing customers above the fold, we need to go all the way into the footer of their website for a tiny link. Invision Community, Invision Powerboard or whatever they call themselves this week is simply a shadow of its former self with a team who has no idea how the modern web works. Go elsewhere for your forum software!
Response from Invision Community ClassicAug 29, 2022
Thanks for the review. I'd like to address a couple of points. Support: we did switch to community support within the last few years. Most of our customers actually find this is a faster way to get answers to their questions. Our staff reply to almost every single topic started. Our team can also escalate to a private ticket for our development team if required. Support absolutely has not been removed, we've just changed how to get it. The marketplace: we are fortunate to have many talented theme designers and developers who produce extra functionality for the Invision Community framework. We list the apps and themes, but the developers set the prices for their own work. We do notify our clients of new updates which offer new functionality and sometimes security updates. We feel this is a responsible thing to do. We are proud to have provided a community platform to tens of thousands of customers serving many millions of forum users over the last twenty years and continue to develop our platform further to meet today's needs.